While the first two Thor movies certainly have their fans, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who ranks his 2011 origin story or 2013’s Thor: The Dark World among the MCU’s best. Even Chris Hemsworth himself last year described his second solo outing as “meh,” and in a more recent interview with Yahoo, the actor credited 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok for kicking some life into the series.
In the lead-up to the release of Avengers: Endgame, Hemsworth reflected on his eight-year run in the MCU, admitting that he was feeling worn out by the time he started work on the third Thor:
“When we came into Ragnarok, I was sort of exhausted of what I’d been doing and a little sort of underwhelmed by what I was putting out there, you know?”
Hemsworth went on to clarify that he wasn’t placing blame on any of his collaborators, but instead felt that he’d created a very limited character for himself:
“That was no fault of any director or writer, that was me personally. It felt like I’d put myself in a box with what the character could do. So on Ragnarok, it was about breaking all the rules, and kinda going ‘as soon as it feels familiar, do something different’, and Taika [Waititi] – the director – had the same vision, and the same, I guess, guts to just roll the dice and [do the] ‘anything goes’ kind of thing.”
Indeed, from start to finish, Waititi’s film gleefully tears down the world that the first two movies created, from the death of Thor’s father and the loss of his hammer, to the complete destruction of Asgard. The anarchic approach apparently paid off, with Ragnarok proving to be the God of Thunder’s most critically acclaimed, commercially successful outing to date.
The subsequent Avengers: Infinity War’s portrayal of Thor was similarly well received, with many fans singling out the hero’s pair-up with Rocket and his arrival in Wakanda to be two of the movie’s highlights. But while most would agree that the character has only just recently hit his stride, there’s been much speculation that Hemsworth might already be finishing his run with Avengers: Endgame. We’ll likely find out when the film hits theaters on April 26th, but for what it’s worth, Thor: Ragnarok’s Tessa Thompson recently suggested that a fourth movie just might be in the works.
